Marcos Breton’s latest column really pissed me off

Gotta love The Sacramento Bee's lone city columnist, Marcos Breton. A guy who stands up for the rich and really sticks it to the poor. What a champ.

In his latest Sunday column, he trashed advocates for downtown’s working class and low-income residents. The backstory: A group of housing, living-wage, small-business and homelessness activists called the Sacramento Coalition for Shared Prosperity has tried to sit down with the Kings since March to discuss a community-benefits agreement. These CBAs exist because city leaders usually agree that major redevelopment projects such as a new arena should benefit everyone, not just basketball teams, developers and ambitious politicos.

The Kings, however, ignored the Coalition. In fact, they formed their own similar alliance as a smokescreen. So, last week, the Coalition sued. (More on this in Raheem F. Hosseini's cover story on page 16.)

Enter Breton's column, titled “Arena suit is simply extortion.” The self-described “defiant journalist” blasted these advocates as greedy shakedown artists.

Ridiculous.

Then, Breton parlayed this hit piece into a “surgical” assault on affordable housing in Sacramento. His thesis? Sacramento has enough, and what it needs are more luxury lofts and market-rate apartments.

That didn’t make any sense. Everyone from politicians to housing experts tell me that there’s a dearth of low-income and transitional housing.

So, I called local attorney Bill Kennedy. He reiterated our desperate need for affordable housing. And not just for the poor, but also for the bottom 80-percent of income earners.

Kennedy called Breton's vision of downtown “a playground for the privileged.”

“It's not journalism,” he said. He's right: Breton's churning out talking-point riddled spin, seemingly at the behest of the Kings and the mayor. It's embarrassing.

Most daily newspapers in major American cities have a few voices that weigh in on the good and bad of city life. It's a great thing, this diversity of opinion. You might say that's the mark of a “world class” metro.

We get Marcos Breton.